The first three seasons of TNG, because the show was still finding its way they were more willing to try anything. It didn't always work, in fact for much of the first two it rarely did, but that willingness to try anything gave the show a fresh and innovative feel to it. By the third season, they finally caught their stride, they were truly creative and they found out what was working. Sadly, in the fourth season that willingness to try anything was gone and the show became mired in a formulaic rut it never really broke free of. That said, I will admit, the last two seasons had some legitimately good character work, a probable combination of the writers really getting to know how to handle the characters and the actors being comfortable in the roles. Really, if you could take the ingenuity of the first three seasons, with the eye for quality of the third, with the character writing and actor performances of the sixth and seventh, TNG could have been a masterpiece.
